After all these many years of the Christian claim that Jesus existed, now, perhaps he didn't.

After all these many years of being told the Bible is infallible, now it is just a bunch of stories.

So, basically, the rules change as and when needed making the whole thing...ahem...bullshit.

Why do you want your foundation to be on shifting sand?

Thanks for taking the time to solidify what I have thought for years...I will now follow Aesop and will pray to one of the heroes of his stories, maybe the ants that are so good at planning or the mouse that pulled the thorn out of the lion's paw, he seems to be compassionate and caring...

See here they are the bruises some were self-inflicted and some showed up along the way. - JF

I'm not saying Jesus never existed. I personally am convinced that he did, given something that is written in the Holy Bible in the first chapter of John. In that book, the writer at one point assumes that the readers know about the conflict between John the Baptist and Jesus pertaining to who was the messiah. This assumption on the part of the writer indicates that the readers knew of both John the Baptist and Jesus, and John the Baptist is a historical figure. As far as I know, there is no question about John's existence. This assumption is not intentional in the book of John; you read it between the lines.

Ironic, isn't it, that even today, John is bearing wittness to Jesus?

What I'm saying is it doesn't matter. We weren't there to see him. All we have is the Gospel record. That's it. Either it is sufficient for our salvation, either we can experience the living Christ today, or all is lost. History means nothing.

(25-02-2012 01:32 AM)He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named Wrote: All we have is the Gospel record. That's it. Either it is sufficient for our salvation, either we can experience the living Christ today, or all is lost. History means nothing.

Awww, I remember being a trapped theist. There there, you'll realize there's meaning without religion some day.

The Jewish Talmud, compiled between 70 and 200 AD:
"On the eve of the Passover Yeshu was hanged. For forty days before the execution took place, a herald went forth and cried, 'He is going forth to be stoned because he has practiced sorcery and enticed Israel to apostasy. Anyone who can say anything in his favor, let him come forward and plead on his behalf.' But since nothing was brought forward in his favor he was hanged on the eve of the Passover."
Another early reference in the Talmud speaks of five of Jesus’ disciples and recounts their standing before judges who make individual decisions about each one, deciding that they should be executed. However, no actual deaths are recorded.

Mara Bar-Serapion, of Syria, writing between 70 and 200 AD from prison to motivate his son to emulate wise teachers of the past:
"What advantage did the Athenians gain from putting Socrates to death? Famine and plague came upon them as a judgment for their crime. What advantage did the men of Samos gain from burying Pythagoras? In a moment their land was covered with sand. What advantage did the Jews gain from executing their wise king? It was just after that that their kingdom was abolished. God justly avenged these three wise men: the Athenians died of hunger; the Samians were overwhelmed by the sea; the Jews, ruined and driven from their land, live in complete dispersion. But Socrates did not die for good; he lived on in the teaching of Plato. Pythagoras did not die for good; he lived on in the statue of Hera. Nor did the wise king die for good; he lived on in the teaching which he had given."

The second account could easily be a rumor.

The bottom line is that it doesn't matter if any real person named Jesus actually lived. If he did he wasn't the son of god. No messiah. So Christian proof of a preacher named Yeshu doesn't really mean anything, true or not. If you think about it, all myths have some real beginning then get completely out of rational belief once they are allowed to not be required to be rational, all based on the concept that god is all powerful..

The Talmud is hardly a reliable source for Jesus' existence, not only because it was written a LONG time after his supposed death, but also because some parts of it even contradict the Bible itself. It's just that those references to Jesus are probably anti-Christian, that's all.

(24-02-2012 01:34 AM)Egor Wrote: We do not have unbiased historical records of Jesus of Nazareth, but it doesn’t matter. The Gospels have survived from that time.

Who cares? We also have the Book of Mormon, but that doesn't mean that we have an account of where the Native Americans came from.

There's no proof that the bible is true, and there's no logical way to prove that it's true. You can say "it's true because it says it's true" (as many believers do) but that's just begging the question (assuming the conclusion to make a premise true --- you have to believe the bible's true in order to accept what it says about its own truth). Or you can say that it contains many true things, but that commits the fallacy of composition (assuming that what is true of the parts is true of the whole), in which case I could list several books that contain many true statements but are not entirely true. You may argue that these points make any and every source suspect --- and rational people agree; this is why we use skepticism. There is no absolute truth, just advances in knowledge that make us "less wrong". Just because something isn't infallible doesn't mean it can't be reliable, but the bible is not reliable... you're on a website that lists several contradictions.

So if we can't trust the gospels to be any more accurate than other ancient works of the time, then we don't have any reliable records of Jesus.

My girlfriend is mad at me. Perhaps I shouldn't have tried cooking a stick in her non-stick pan.

(25-02-2012 01:32 AM)Egor Wrote: I'm not saying Jesus never existed. I personally am convinced that he did, given something that is written in the Holy Bible in the first chapter of John. In that book, the writer at one point assumes that the readers know about the conflict between John the Baptist and Jesus pertaining to who was the messiah. This assumption on the part of the writer indicates that the readers knew of both John the Baptist and Jesus, and John the Baptist is a historical figure. As far as I know, there is no question about John's existence. This assumption is not intentional in the book of John; you read it between the lines.

Ironic, isn't it, that even today, John is bearing wittness to Jesus?

What I'm saying is it doesn't matter. We weren't there to see him. All we have is the Gospel record. That's it. Either it is sufficient for our salvation, either we can experience the living Christ today, or all is lost. History means nothing.

It's commonly believed that Jesus died in around 33 AD correct?
Now the first gospel wasn't wrote until at least 70 AD. That's a gap of at least 40 years and our main source of information for this period comes from Paul. He says Jesus came to him in a vision and told him to preach Christianity.

Now the funny thing is Paul never talks about Jesus as a person on earth. He only mentions the crucifixion, the resurrection and the ascension. He never mentions the early life of Jesus or anything other than the previous three things. Also He only ever talks about them in a mythical realm. He never places them on earth.

It can easily be theorised that Paul never believed Jesus was a real person.

(25-02-2012 01:32 AM)Egor Wrote: I'm not saying Jesus never existed. I personally am convinced that he did, given something that is written in the Holy Bible in the first chapter of John. In that book, the writer at one point assumes that the readers know about the conflict between John the Baptist and Jesus pertaining to who was the messiah. This assumption on the part of the writer indicates that the readers knew of both John the Baptist and Jesus, and John the Baptist is a historical figure. As far as I know, there is no question about John's existence. This assumption is not intentional in the book of John; you read it between the lines.

Ironic, isn't it, that even today, John is bearing wittness to Jesus?

What I'm saying is it doesn't matter. We weren't there to see him. All we have is the Gospel record. That's it. Either it is sufficient for our salvation, either we can experience the living Christ today, or all is lost. History means nothing.

It's commonly believed that Jesus died in around 33 AD correct?
Now the first gospel wasn't wrote until at least 70 AD. That's a gap of at least 40 years and our main source of information for this period comes from Paul. He says Jesus came to him in a vision and told him to preach Christianity.

Now the funny thing is Paul never talks about Jesus as a person on earth. He only mentions the crucifixion, the resurrection and the ascension. He never mentions the early life of Jesus or anything other than the previous three things. Also He only ever talks about them in a mythical realm. He never places them on earth.

It can easily be theorised that Paul never believed Jesus was a real person.

You are so right! This is a fundamental point that 99.99% of Christians don't appreciate. Well said!

(23-02-2012 09:04 PM)Mr Woof Wrote: Historically it appears that he did exist as there are some very brief secular points relating to this.

Which are based on hearsay from Christians, many decades after his supposed existence, not eyewitnesses.

(23-02-2012 09:04 PM)Mr Woof Wrote: He was most probably Jewish, in keeping with his profound knowledge of Judaism and the fact that he was allowed to preach to fellow Jews.

The Jesus character never refers to himself as a Jew in the gospels. He instead spends all of his time engaging in Goebbels-like hate speech against "The Jews" who have "killed all of THEIR prophets." When the Pilate character asks him directly if he's "King of the Jews," the Jesus character deflects the question: "YOU say so." I think this was deliberate on the part of the evangelists.

The Jesus character knows very little about Judaism. The Pharisees would have considered somebody like him more of a joke than a threat. Jesus lecturing the Pharisees on the meaning of the Torah would have like Ray Comfort lecturing Ken Miller on biology.

(23-02-2012 09:04 PM)Mr Woof Wrote: There was considerable early confusion (pre Constantine) as to who parented him with the early follower of the faith, Marcion, claiming that Jesus was son of the real god, not Yahveh, the latter being quite an amateur, with the son representing truth.
Indeed, Marcion would have had the whole O.T destroyed. Other Gnostic groups held stange ideas as to whether our future saviour was exclusively man or spirit.

There were considerable ideological battles. The proto-orthodox groups won out by their rigorous application and promotion of the "anyone who doesn't agree with us is a heretic" polemics.

(23-02-2012 09:04 PM)Mr Woof Wrote: The preachings of Jesus were all written down several decades after his alleged death and differ in content.

Or they were simply invented by the evangelists. "Jesus's" teachings = the evangelists teachings. There is no reason to assume a historical core, a "sayings gospel," Q, or anything else traceable back to a supposed historical figure.

(23-02-2012 09:04 PM)Mr Woof Wrote: While he is depicted as gentle and kind in some ways, he also spoke of eternal hell fire and much wailing and gnashing of teeth for dissenters.

The Jesus character's main preoccupation is anti-semitism, demonstrating through what he thought were clever arguments to show that the Pharisees and "The Jews" generally were Untermensch who were too lost and degenerate to still follow "God's commandments," and it was time to make room for the Gentiles. Indeed, the Jesus character and all of his apostles are positively in love with the Romans throughout the New Testament. Reading this crude propaganda, you would think the Romans were the oppressed and the Jews were the oppressors instead of the actual historical reality, which of course was the opposite of the picture that the evangelists attempt to engineer.

(05-03-2012 02:51 AM)Spidersandguns Wrote: It's commonly believed that Jesus died in around 33 AD correct?
Now the first gospel wasn't wrote until at least 70 AD. That's a gap of at least 40 years and our main source of information for this period comes from Paul. He says Jesus came to him in a vision and told him to preach Christianity.

Now the funny thing is Paul never talks about Jesus as a person on earth. He only mentions the crucifixion, the resurrection and the ascension. He never mentions the early life of Jesus or anything other than the previous three things. Also He only ever talks about them in a mythical realm. He never places them on earth.

It can easily be theorised that Paul never believed Jesus was a real person.

Paul does say in one of his letters that Jesus was "born of a woman, under the law," who was crucified by the "archons of this age," but that's about it. 99% of his preaching consists of the highly complex theology of, "Screw the Torah! We have Christ crucified. That's all you need for salvation and the afterlife." Like Jesus, the Paul character has only a vague (mis)understanding of Judaism, and is hardly qualified to speak on the subject at all, much less as authoritatively as he does.

The Paul character didn't give a fig tree about the insignificant life of the "historical" Jesus. The only thing that mattered to him was that Christ was crucified and resurrected. The function of the Paul character was to explain the supposed significance of Christ's death, not his life.